Dangerous Inheritance

by Dennis Wheatley

  At that moment the man who was running away looked over his shoulder. Seeing that Truss’s back was now turned, he grabbed up a large stone, swung round, and threw it. Either his aim was good or it was a lucky shot. It caught Truss on the back of the neck just as he was about to go to Douglas’s rescue. He stumbled, pitched forward and went down on his knees. The big stone had struck him squarely at the base of the skull, rendering him temporarily sick and dizzy. With an effort he pulled himself together and stumbled to his feet. But by then the warder had pulled Douglas inside the door and, despite his continued struggles, had nearly succeeded in closing it.

  Lurching forward, Truss managed to get his foot and knee in the door. For a short time a trial of strength then took place between the gorilla-like man inside and the tall, muscular young American. Truss dared not step back to throw his whole weight against the door in a charge, as the pressure on its other side would have snapped it shut, but the warder was handicapped by having to cling on to Douglas. Gradually it inched open, then suddenly gave a foot or more. Greatly encouraged, Truss redoubled his efforts. Next moment he realised to what he owed his temporary advantage. His opponent had relaxed only for long enough to press a nearby switch. Alarm bells shrilled inside the prison.

  Desperate now at the thought that within another few minutes the game would be up, Douglas again a prisoner and himself a fugitive with nothing to show for it, Truss reacted in a way only excusable by the heat of the moment. Thrusting the Sten gun in above his knee, he pressed the trigger sharply once, sending two bullets into the warder’s foot.

  Letting out a howl of pain the man staggered back, and the door flew open. With one huge hand he still held his prisoner by the collar, but the strength of his grip had lessened. Douglas tore himself free, pushed him back and stumbled outside.

  All this had occupied only a few minutes, but they were sufficient for the Sergeant to have partially recovered and he was on his feet again. He made a grab at Douglas as he ran towards the car but Douglas dodged him and ran on. Pointing the Sten gun at the Sergeant, Truss yelled, ‘Out of the way, you; or you’ll have had it.’

  The man threw up his hands and backed away. Truss, keeping him covered for another half-minute, shuffled swiftly crabwise towards the car. Fleur had opened both doors ready for them. Douglas scrambled in beside her, then Truss dived into the back. She let in the clutch and they were away. But by then the sentry had regained his senses. Grabbing up his rifle he sent two shots clanging into the back of the car.

  As soon as they had partially regained their breath, Douglas panted, ‘Thanks, Truss; thanks. In there … I was constantly in fear they’d … find some way to kill me. For getting me out I can never repay you.’

  ‘We’ll be mighty lucky if… soon we’re not back in there,’ Truss replied between gasps for air. ‘I’m in it too now … up to the neck … for having shot that warder. It’ll not be months but years if they get me.’ Then he added to Fleur, ‘Drive like hell, hon … Fleur. Take no notice of traffic signs or anyone who tries to stop us. They’ll be after us in that damn’ car any moment now. That Sergeant will have waited only to get a couple of other men with weapons from the prison.’

  In his preoccupation with their danger he had momentarily forgotten the delicate situation between the three of them, and had nearly said, ‘honey’. But Fleur was far from having forgotten it. To rescue a man from prison does not excuse taking his wife, and, like Truss, for the past half-hour she had been on tenterhooks to know if Lalita had disclosed her infidelity to Douglas. Able to bear the suspense no longer, she said to him:

  ‘While you were in prison did … did Lalita come and question you?’

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I haven’t seen him since he arrested me. I’m charged, you know, with having received a lot of smuggled goods from the ships that Admiral de Mel took on a cruise. One of the warders, who was quite a friendly fellow, told me that de Mel and several other officers were interdicted yesterday; and I imagine Lalita was too busy with them to bother, for the time being, about me.’

  Fleur had hardly given a silent sigh of relief before her thoughts were brought back with a jolt to the immediate present. Truss was kneeling on the back seat of the car peering out of the window; and she had just slowed a little to take the corner out of Baseline Road into that which led east, away from the city when he shouted.

  ‘Step on it, Fleur! I can see their headlights and they’re gaining on us.’

  At that hour there was little traffic and they were running through a suburb of scattered tumbledown buildings. Fleur put on all the speed she could, but half a mile further on a horse and cart emerged from a side turning. She was forced to brake sharply and reduce speed almost to a crawl before they could get by. The police car came streaking up behind them. Truss felt that, knowing him to be armed, the men in it would not have dared press the chase without first arming themselves. At any moment he expected them to open fire. Swiftly he decided that the only chance of escape now lay in firing first. With a heavy blow from the butt of the Sten gun he bashed a big hole in the triplex glass of the rear window, thrust the barrel of the gun through it and fired a long burst.

  Fully conscious of what a terrible thing it would be if he killed one of the police, he aimed low. The spray of bullets smashed into the radiator, tore open one tyre and the car lights went out. The car swerved to one side, mounted a low bank and came to a halt half-way through a croton hedge.

  By then Fleur was regaining speed and after another two miles they were out in the country which surrounds Colombo, where patches of jungle alternate with plantations of coconut, paddy fields and many small villages. Lights were still burning in the villages and quite a few people moving about. In spite of the necessity for speed, while running through the villages, Fleur had to drive carefully; so it was past ten o’clock before they had covered the fifteen miles to the considerable town of Gampaha.

  By that time orders to stop them could have been telephoned ahead; so they feared that here they would be faced with an attempt to do so. As they ran through the town they peered anxiously ahead. Then as they approached the main crossroads they saw that their fears were only too well founded.

  A line of six policemen barred their way. But they had not had time to make a road block; so Fleur charged straight at them. They held their ground until the car was within twenty feet, yelling and waving for it to halt. Then, as they realised that the driver was not slowing down, they leaped aside, two of them rolling into the gutter. Two of the others pulled out their revolvers and sent shots after the retreating car. But their aim was poor, and none of the shots took effect.

  It was when they were about five miles past Gampaha that Fleur noticed that the petrol gauge was unexpectedly low. The tanks had been full when she had started out; now they were four-fifths empty and the car had done only something over twenty miles. Alarmed at this she brought it to a halt; then Douglas and Truss got out to see if they could trace a leak.

  By the light of a torch they found that, although the tank had not been pierced by the bullets fired at the car, it had been scored by one of them. In the middle section of the furrow it had made before ricocheting off, the metal was paper thin and the petrol seeping through minute holes in it. As they had no putty or anything which, when the car was in motion, would serve to stop the leak, they decided that the only way they could continue their journey was somehow to get hold of another car.

  At a reduced speed Fleur drove on until they came to the outskirts of a big village. There she pulled up at the side of the road, then Truss got out and walked on.

  Douglas, too, got out and kept an anxious watch on the road behind them; for since leaving Gampaha they had feared that a police car would be sent in pursuit and, if it was, their only course would have been to try to get away in the jungle. But it seemed that the Gampaha police were either too lacking in initiative to come after them or, having learned that the fugitives were armed and had already shot to disaster one police car,
were too scared for their own skins to give chase.

  After a quarter of an hour, their fears that they would have to take to the jungle while still separated from Truss gradually lessened but, as they waited impatiently for his return and the time of his absence lengthened, they began to be afraid that while attempting to steal a car he had been caught.

  Over an hour elapsed before an old Ford drew up beside them and Truss got out of it. ‘Best I could do,’ he said a shade unhappily. ‘In these parts people don’t run to slap-up autos, and I had to go for one parked in a lean-to. Still, it’s more than half full of gas. Come on, let’s transfer our things to the old jalopy and get going again.’

  On opening the boot they found that another bullet had embedded itself in one of Truss’s suitcases; but he raised a laugh by saying he wished both bullets had made holes through his clothes as then he would be able to go about looking like a real gangster. Within five minutes they had moved their baggage and stores over to the Ford, and while doing so discussed what should be done with the car they were abandoning.

  When found, it would give away that after leaving Gampaha they had continued on the main road to the north-east and had not attempted to throw off pursuit by taking a side turning. But for one of them to have run the car some distance down a jungle track, left it there and then walked back, would have cost precious time; and it might, anyhow, have been discovered there quite early in the morning.

  Having decided to leave it where it was, they piled into the old Ford and, with Truss at the wheel, set off again. For some two and a half hours the ancient vehicle banged and clattered along, at no great pace but a fairly steady speed, passing now through unlit villages and long stretches of impenetrably dark jungle. At about half an hour after midnight they were approaching Kurunegala, much the biggest town on their route, so certain to hold great danger of capture for them. Feeling sure there would be a police block on the main road Truss took a turning to the left soon after entering the suburbs. Twice they lost their way in rambling lanes but, after twenty minutes of anxious twisting and turning, found their way back on to the highway to the north of the town.

  Then at about a quarter to two in the morning, soon after they had left behind them a small town that Douglas said he thought was Galewela, while they were going up a short but steep gradient the engine suddenly concked out. By the light of the torch Truss and Douglas examined it, but could not discover what had caused the break-down. Perhaps the old ‘bus might have been good for another year or two, doing only short runs at a moderate speed, but it seemed that the pace at which Truss had driven for over thirty miles had proved too much for her.

  They were now some sixty miles from Colombo as the crow flies and estimated that Dambulla, the half-way point of their journey, lay not much more than twelve miles ahead. But that was small consolation, as they should have reached it hours earlier; and in darkness with a car travelling at high speed they would have stood a much better chance of getting through a police cordon there, as they had at Gampaha, than they would have now they had to walk and could not hope to reach the town before dawn. To add to their depression there was no alternative to abandoning their luggage and stores.

  Truss would have liked to leave some money in one of the pockets of the car as compensation for its owner; but Douglas said that whoever found the Ford, or the police when they searched it, would be certain to pocket a banknote; so, after they had fortified themselves with a drink from one of the bottles of red wine in the boot, Truss took Fleur’s beauty case from her and they set off.

  When Truss, as a boy, had been at summer camps he had often gone on long hikes; so he made them march in step and join him in singing favourite choruses, as the best means of delaying fatigue and keeping up their spirits. After they had covered eight miles the sky began to lighten and the jungle on either side woke to life. Through the thick foliage below the tall palms, bread-fruit and mango trees, they caught glimpses of animals large and small. Once they had to step over a procession of giant ants that was crossing the road; at others monkeys, performing a variety of acrobatics, frequently gibbered at them from the tree tops.

  On the last hour of their trudge they fell silent, as both Fleur and Douglas were unused to the strain of such continued exertion; although she stood up to it better than he did, because frequent swimming and tennis had kept her muscles in better trim.

  It was about half past four when they came to the first scattered houses of Dambulla. Although it was by then fairly light their occupants were not yet stirring, and as they passed the third house Douglas came to a sudden halt.

  ‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said. ‘We have already stolen a car——’

  ‘I know,’ Truss interrupted, ‘and I’m keeping a look-out. With luck we’ll come on another, parked by some bungalow, and be able to make off in it before its owner is about.’

  ‘No, no. Not a car.’ Douglas pointed to a thatched lean-to that stood near the house. ‘Why not a cart? And there’s one over there. I’ll drive and you two could travel inside it.’

  ‘It would be terribly slow,’ Truss demurred. ‘Unless there’s some hitch the aircraft will be coming to pick us up this afternoon. We’d never make it to Elephant Point with a horse and cart.’

  ‘We must chance that,’ said Fleur quickly. ‘What matters at the moment is to get past the police in Dambulla. Douglas is right. In a cart we’d stand a much better chance than in a car or on our flat feet.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Truss agreed, ‘and maybe we’ll be able to pick up a car later. Come on, then.’

  Moving quickly to the side of the road, Fleur kept watch on the house while Truss and Douglas got out the cart and harnessed to it a small shaggy horse from an adjacent stall. The cart was a small one on two high wheels with a tattered canvas cover supported by hoops. When sitting on its floor, Fleur and Truss were concealed from view, and as Douglas was wearing the outer garment and old hat that Banda had brought into the cell he did not look conspicuously unlike a Sinhalese peasant. Within six minutes of their decision to take the cart they were jolting off down the road.

  When they entered the town proper it was still deserted, except for a few market people beginning to arrange their stalls for the day; but as they neared its centre Douglas saw that preparations had been made for their reception. Ahead lay a road block composed of poles and trestles. Between them was sufficient space only to allow a single vehicle to pass and that could have been closed swiftly with another pole by the group of police who were lounging nearby.

  Now, Douglas had good reason to thank his stars that he had thought of the cart for, otherwise, there would have been little chance of their escaping capture. Even as it was, if the police looked inside the cart their number would be up. But to have turned back at the sight of the barriers might have aroused suspicion. Endeavouring to suppress his fears, he hunched his shoulders, so that his chin nearly touched his chest, cracked his whip and drove on.

  When he reached the barrier he had to hold the reins tightly to stop his hands from trembling, and perspiration was beginning to break out on his forehead as he thought of the wretched fate that was in store for all of them if they were arrested. But he managed to call a cheerful ‘good morning’ to the policemen.

  One of them stepped into the road and asked him what he had in his cart. With his heart in his mouth he replied, ‘My poor wife. She’s gone down with a typhoid and I’m taking her to hospital.’

  As he did not know where the hospital was, and it might have been in the direction from which they had come, he had taken a desperate gamble; but he was hoping that from fear of infection the policeman would refrain from pulling aside the back curtain of the cart.

  Inside it, crouching in the semi-darkness, Fleur and Truss knew only that the cart had come to a halt and that Douglas was being questioned. Clasping hands and holding their breath, they waited for a few minutes in awful suspense. Then the whip cracked and the cart moved on. Yet for some while they continued to fe
ar that at any moment it might be halted again.

  It was not until a quarter of an hour later that Douglas pulled aside one of the front flaps of the hood to tell them that they were safely out of the town. By then it had become very stuffy inside the cart so, greatly relieved, Truss was able to tie back the rear curtains, enabling Fleur and himself both to look out and to get more air.

  As had been the case on their trip up to the ancient cities, at Dambulla they had left the main highway for the road east to Polonnaruwa, and were now entering a sparsely populated area of jungle. When they had been in the ‘dry’ zone before, the annual rains had only recently started; so many of the trees still had bare branches or were clothed in grey beards of lichen and such leaves as remained had been baked an apricot colour. But that had been a fortnight back. Now their life had been renewed, they were sprouting with every shade of tender green, the creepers were sending out new tendrils and the young fronds of giant ferns were unfolding.

  Through occasional breaks in the forest, away to the southeast of Dambulla they could see range after range of mountains rising to six thousand feet, a lovely misty blue against the brighter blue of the sky. But, fortunately, the country through which they were passing was the beginning of the great eastern plain; for the little horse, although he seemed game enough, had quite a load to pull and even here on the flat could manage only about five miles an hour.

  To while away the tedium of the journey Truss and Fleur began a competition to see which of them could first spot the greater number of wild animals, giving extra points for rarity. Monkeys were two a penny as there were colonies of them every half mile or so. The deep-voiced wanderoos barked at them as they passed, small mischievous ones chattered excitedly and threw nuts. Some swung rapidly from tested branch to tested branch along roads among the tree tops that they knew well, the females often carrying their young slung below their bodies; others would remain perched aloft absorbed in the friendly task of picking the fleas from a companion. There were many squirrels, jackals and now and then a mongoose; also herds of the little spotted Mouse deer and the common Moutjac. Fleur won good points by sighting a big cow elephant with her cherubic little calf hanging on to her tail, but Truss evened up with a twenty-foot python coiled in the fork of a tree.